Argenta News - The Times They Are a Whining

The Times They Are a Whining

Written by Scott Miller

Monday, November 17 2008

Sample Image

I wish I could have titled this post "The Times they are Changing" but it doesn't appear the Times is on the verge of changing anything that will benefit local North Little Rock news coverage. I recieved this e-mail Friday from Dennis Byrd, the publisher of The North Little Rock Times.

Scott,

If this is the right e-mail for you, please give me a call at 370-8300. I've tried calling you at three different numbers with no luck. Thanks

Dennis Byrd

After e-mailing Dennis my phone number, I recieved a curt call from Dennis. Dennis pointed out, I had cut and pasted the Times masthead image from the Times web site on my Friday post critical of the Times and had been using it for a while . Dennis requested I stop using the image from the Times web site and

Click on the Read More button for more of this post

I agreed to remove it immediately from Argenta News web site, which I did.

Funny thing though, The Times didn't seem to have a problem with cutting and pasting from their web site when I was trying to promote the Times last year. Only after I gave up on the Times and started to criticize them did they complain. So above is the image, I will use for NLR Times posts from now on. This image is a photograph I took from a public street.

WARNING TO ALL WEB SITE POSTERS

Do not cut and paste from the NLR Times web site if you going to criticize them.

NOTES FOR THE NLR TIMES AND DENNIS BYRD

I am not that hard to find by phone. Most any of the businesses in Argenta, people at City Hall and residents down here know how to find me My phone number is even on the NLRTV every hour when they list the neighborhood associations. You can even use that new fangled thing called Google and find me. Your e-mail says more about the Times reporting skills than my unavailability
If you don't want people cutting and pasting from from the NLR Times web site, spend a few bucks to fix the images so they can't be cut and pasted. But this would require the NLR Times actually investing in something. Lately all the Times has done is divest itself of things that would benefit NLR. The Times has divested itself of their investment in NLR by moving their offices to Little Rock and over the years, the Times has also divested itself of reporters and photographers covering NLR.
Thank you for validating that local web sites and blogs are affecting the Times.
Perhaps the Times could better spend their resources and time writing a few more stories about NLR each week instead of tracking down people you aren't happy with. The local web sites and blogs have no problem finding more stories about NLR every day than the Times typically prints in a week..

Good luck Mr. Byrd. I suspect you will need it far more than I will in future business ventures.

Tag it:

Comments (11)

Written by Old Roi Polloi, on 14-11-2008 23:09
It saddens me to see what has become of a once-great newspaper. It appears to be intentional suicide. I miss the old Times.

Written by ctyankee, on 15-11-2008 00:54
Isn't this the same Times masthead that was featured on one of the mailouts during the mayoral election campaign, along with "police reports" of one of the candidates?

Talk about whining
Written by alby72114, on 15-11-2008 06:35
If you ever had to put a real newspaper together you would find that there are actually people who work very hard to serve the public.

Oh, I guess you did produce that thing until it quietly disappeared--what was it--Dogtownwire?

I had completely forgotten about it until now. Sore spot for you?

Thanks for the warning!
Written by Big dog daddy, on 15-11-2008 08:05
Scott but the times hasn't really had anything worth copying in Months and months.
I thought it was kinda funny that Jeremy whatsisname came to a campaign fund raiser fish fry and stayed for an hour and a half, talked to about 25 people took what seemed like 20 or so pictures and only had a few lines to write about it, (maybe an inch article)and the picture he used was horrible. Thats just one example. And really have any of the Blogs EVER really even tried to compete with the times? Most were born from frustrations of not getting neighborhood news that we wanted. Issues that affect us personally.
I dont think any of us can really blame the workers though, they are held back by the upper management that has NO idea what is needed to produce a good LOCAL paper. By the time it comes out in the TIMES on thursday its old news anyway.
And to say he could get ahold of you? Pulease. You are one of the easiest people in the world to find. Your everywhere for crying out loud.
I get more out of reading the Thrifty Nickel or Auto Trader than I do from reading that rag.
I wont read it anymore, and hope more of ya'll dont waste TIME on it either.

Dogtown will be back
Written by scottmiller, on 15-11-2008 09:51
Alby, good people work everywhere, even in the Bush administration. This is not an indictment on good people, but rather an indictment on on poor leadership. I pulled Dogtown Wire down because it couldn't meet the quality of what I wanted and what I thought the readers deserved. Perhaps the Times management should do the same with the NLR Times. Over the last month I have been busy retooling Dogtown and it will be relaunched in the next 2-3 weeks. Thanks for asking!!

if you cut and paste
Written by Lordlimosdriver, on 17-11-2008 12:15
an image from another website, and they ask you to pull it down from your website, you should.

fair use of logo
Written by ambotian, on 17-11-2008 14:11
Scott,
You didn't have to pull the logo if you didn't want to. Perfectly legal fair use.

Wait...
Written by gchoate17, on 17-11-2008 17:35
NLR has a newspaper?

I did pull it!!
Written by scottmiller, on 17-11-2008 17:45
I agree Lord....., That is why I pulled it. It may be fair use, legally, but I thought I would show the NLR Times respect by listening to them. Which is apparently something they can't do...Listen to their readers. And even if they can;t listen to their readers, you would think they could read their ad revenue and circulation numbers.

Yeah...
Written by dumblonde, on 17-11-2008 18:42
NLR has a newspaper. Their sports section is bigger than their NLR news section. As a matter of fact, I bet if you put all of the ads placed in the paper on consecutive pages, their ads would take up more space than the NLR news section.

Breaking News
Written by mooncat, on 18-11-2008 20:47
NLR Times has posted a breaking news story on their web site! That makes 2 breaking news stories at one time!